Three Simple Steps To Get All The Freelance Clients You Will Ever Need

By Jennifer Bourn on July 5, 2018

Learn how to avoid bad clients or clients who simply aren’t a good fit and find the amazing clients who are a perfect fit and happy to pay your full rate.

Whether you’re offering freelance services or you’re an agency, there is one thing you can’t survive without — clients. If your business model is centered around providing client services, clients are both your greatest need and biggest asset, because without them there is no business.

To maintain or grow your freelance business, you need a consistent stream of enjoyable clients who value what you do, respect your expertise, happily pay your full rate, and are ready to get started. But, if you’ve been working with clients for any length of time, you know that description doesn’t even come close to accurate for all clients.

So how do you avoid the so-called bad clients or clients who simply aren’t a good fit for your agency and find the amazing clients who are a perfect fit?

There are three steps to attracting all the ideal clients you’ll ever need:

Narrow your focus

Expand your visibility

Position your expertise

STEP 1: Narrow Your Focus

Often, bad clients aren’t really bad clients, they’re just not the right client for you. If you’ve found yourself struggling with difficult clients and you’re uninspired to do the work you’ve been hired for, chances are you’re casting your client attraction net too wide.

When you try to serve everyone, you end up serving no one well. When your marketing messages are general and broad-reaching, few will take notice. And, if you say yes to every prospect that comes along, you end up with projects you don’t like and clients that seem impossible to please. Instead, it’s critical that you narrow your focus to a specific niche and build your expert reputation for that niche—this could be a specific client persona, type of service, or industry.

Think about using a small hand-held net to scoop the exact fish you want from a giant fish tank instead of using a big mechanical net to scoop up all the fish and then weeding through them to find the one fish you wanted.

When you narrow your focus, all branding, marketing, and sales efforts can be:

Created to solve precise industry challenges

Tailored to speak directly to and resonate with an ideal client

Centered around a distinct service package or offering

The key is gaining clarity around:

Who you serve

What problems you solve

What service you provide

How you are different from others

What big results your clients achieve

Why you’re the best choice

When your branding, marketing, and sales messages are crystal clear, it becomes easy for prospects to identify themselves as a perfect fit, which means you’ll not only attract more ideal clients, you’ll enjoy a shorter sales cycle.

STEP 2: Expand Your Visibility

No one can hire you to build a WordPress website if they don’t know that you exist. Once you’ve decided to sell WordPress services, your new primary job as a freelancer or agency owner is making sure that other people, especially those in your niche, know that you exist, how you can help, and why you’re the best choice.

All of your efforts should be on building your brand reputation and getting your business in front of your niche in as many ways as possible:

Find out if there are relevant industry or trade organizations, join them, and take advantage of any member benefits that would increase visibility.

Research which networking events, conferences, workshops, and seminars your niche typically goes to and invest in attending, sponsoring, or speaking.

Identify the experts and centers of influence your niche looks to for information, build personal relationships with these leaders and look for ways to partner or align your brand with theirs.

Discover what Facebook groups or online communities exist to serve your niche and join them—even if that means paying for access.

Invest in advertising and marketing initiatives both online and offline.

In today’s fast-paced, overcrowded marketplace, your prospects are bombarded with sales messages and overwhelmed with distractions, so your efforts to be seen must be clear, consistent, and constant. And, the best time to double-down on those efforts is when you’re busy so your pipeline of new clients is always full.

If you need to catch a fish for dinner, you wouldn’t spend the day fishing in a lake with little to no fish, nor would you drop a hook and bait in the water then ignore it all day. Instead, you’d find a body of water with the most fish possible, test different fishing spots, try different tackle and bait, and cast and recast several times. Simply put, you need to put forth a lot of effort to get your bait in front of a fish who is ready to bite—and if you’re smart, you’ll catch more than one fish so you know you’ll have dinner tomorrow too.

STEP 3: Position Your Expertise

While narrowing your focus and expanding your visibility will catch the attention of ideal prospects, it’s not enough to convince them of your expertise and guarantee a booked-solid business. You also need to position your expertise in the market so you become a trusted thought leader and go-to resource.

Your ideal clients have a challenge or problem they can’t solve on their own and they’re looking for the best solution—an expert to hire that will take care of their needs, architect a solution, take away some stress. You have the experience, knowledge, skills, and expertise prospects need and it’s up to you to make sure they understand that.

Just a few ways to do this include:

Use case studies and testimonials to showcase past projects, successes, and positive results.

Speak at events, be a guest on podcasts, and host webinars to share your wisdom and expertise.

Participate in the online communities your niche frequents—skip the self-promotion and focus on answering all questions remotely related to your niche and the services you offer.

Positioning yourself as the best choice and not just another choice is all about packaging your expertise in a way that makes it look as appealing and tasty as possible because when you drop your bait in the water, you want the big fish to bite without hesitation.

The Logical Next Step

By effectively narrowing your focus, expanding your visibility, and positioning your expertise, your freelance business or agency will be primed to attract a consistent stream of enjoyable clients who value what you do, respect your expertise, happily pay your full rate, and are ready to get started. And, with a strategic WordPress lead inquiry form, you can effectively segment and qualify each prospect to weed out the tire-kicking prospects who aren’t a good fit and make room for the amazing, ideal clients who are.

Some links used on this site are “affiliate links.” If you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

About Jennifer Bourn

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative, a full service design and development company specializing in WordPress. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, blogs about food and travel at Inspired Imperfection, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento, and writes often for other websites on freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding.

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